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Macquarie University Innovation Hub Wins Four Times in the 2017 Timber Design Awards

Date:02-Nov-17Author: David Rowlinson

Macquarie University Innovation Hub exterior

The recently completed Macquarie University Innovation Hub won a total of four awards in the 2017 Australian Timber Design Awards, which were announced on Wednesday 25th October at the Melbourne Museum. It won the award for Innovative Timber Design, Engineered Timber, Timber Panels and Timber Windows and Doors.

The Incubator (as it is now called) is an ambitious, well-crafted building enabled by an aspirational client and a unique collaboration of design professionals, which included Architectus, Strongbuild, Taylor Thomson Whitting, Arup and Lipman.

The brief required a prefabricated timber structure to enable future dismantle, relocation and reassembly. Project deadlines necessitated fast-tracked construction, which the team achieved through offsite prefabrication and assembly.

Other sustainability features of the project include passive environmental control elements such as operable wall panels to enable natural ventilation, cantilevered roofs to shade windows and reduce solar gain, and double-glazing. The building also has solar panels on its roof, and a monitoring system that gives feedback on energy use in the building. Rainwater is harvested from the roof for landscape irrigation.

The Incubator spaces aim to facilitate budding entrepreneurs as they grow a business idea or social enterprise into a successful start-up.